Tecnomatix Latest Release - What's New

Because Tecnomatix® understands manufacturing and knows that manufacturers need software solutions that will assist them in providing the kinds of state-of-the-art products that their clients seek, we have developed a very special portfolio of digital manufacturing software. Our latest Tecnomatix release from Siemens PLM Software, a bundle that includes Process Designer 13, Process Simulate 13, Plant Simulation 13, RobotExpert 13 and Factory 2017, offers manufacturers advanced technology solutions as they carry out their planning, simulation, and production processes. Our software not only guides manufacturers in planning and verifying manufacturing processes and optimizing their total systems during the pre-production stages, but also provides critical feedback as to potential consequences if those processes and systems do not perform as expected, preparing the manufacturer for the kinds of critical responses necessary if production stops, and guiding them as to how to restore the process in the timeliest manner possible. This latest release of the Tecnomatix portfolio provides manufacturers with the kinds of new and innovative capabilities that effectuate processes of specific industries, and suggest enhanced solutions that are designed to optimize factory layout, robotic utilizations, and human simulations, while –at the same time– improving the overall user experience. While we are rightly proud of what Tecnomatix achieves for industry, we will appreciate your personal evaluations and feedback in the comments section below.

Tecnomatix enhanced benefits and features:

Industry-focused solutions especially designed for Automotive & Transportation, Aerospace & Defense, Heavy Equipment Machinery, Consumer Packaged Goods, and Electronics & Semiconductor industry users.
Innovative capabilities designed to optimize digital factory layout, robotics utilizations, human simulations, and more.
Finely-tuned user interface experience, interactions, and ease of use.
Powerful new tools that mirror industry needs.
Robot cabling that enhances physical behavior and motion simulation tools.
Manufacturers operating within such diverse industries as automotive, transportation, and heavy equipment machinery fully understand the importance played by robotic systems in the delivery of the kinds of innovative products that the market is currently demanding. And while these systems are now prerequisite to manufacturing processes, their efficient and quality performance requires detailed planning. While cabling remains key to the high performance of such advanced robotic systems, it is also often difficult to predict and execute during programming and implementation stages, and any resulting mistakes can lead to serious production issues.
So, what should a manufacturer do if a cable malfunction occurs during production? Process Simulate 13 now includes a new cable add-on that provides operators with knowledge about the kinds of intervention tools to employ and guides them in problem-solving through simulations of robot cable physical behavior and motion.
This new cable functionality guides users in the creation and modifications of cables, leads them in defining cable dimensions and physical characteristics, adding hooks and connection points, and performing realistic cable simulation, while also analyzing such cable features as coiling, excessive extension force, and potential collisions within the production layout. Users can then also utilize the software error identifications to regenerate the cable by providing it with an alternative cable shape.

The software provides for intuitive and easy-to-use ways for users to create continuous operation coverage patterns.

Paint and spray path planning, coverage simulations, and analysis tools
Among Tecnomatix new and innovative features are its paint and spray path planning and coverage simulation tools, which have been especially designed for automotive, transportation, aerospace, and defense industry users. These features provide these industries with the unique ability to carry out spray application path planning. Among these critical features are also simulations and visualizations that provide users with an understanding of the kinds of coverage possible.
The Continuous Process Generator has been revamped in such a way that it better supports the coverage pattern process. The software provides for intuitive and easy-to-use ways for users to create continuous operation coverage patterns. This tool guides users in the drawing of a reference curve on a part, which then creates a pattern by duplicating the curve with constant offset strokes. The pattern can then be previewed and easily modified prior to the creation of the operation itself. This new operation is ideal for painting, polishing, coating, spraying, or many other processes that require surface covering while material is being added or removed.
Another new feature of this software is that users can now learn the number of paint layers/strokes that affect a point on a surface (mesh point). During the simulation, a configurable color clearly designates each layer. The Paint and Coverage settings provide users with a number of tools that allow them to control the exact surfaces to be used for coverage simulation, display or hide the coverage map during simulation, display a ghost spray applicator, such as a brush, and/or display a stroke map that indicates multiple strokes over the same area of the generated mesh.
Waypoint planning and viewing tools

Another of the new and exciting features is the waypoint capability that especially allows aerospace and defense industry users to better plan and program their production processes. With the new Waypoint Viewer users can manage waypoints –the approach and escape paths between operations commonly used in drilling and riveting applications– so as to easily and quickly configure collision-free robot paths. These waypoints and their resulting operational structures are supported by both simulation and offline program downloads.
Fluid process production performance simulation and throughput tools
Plant Simulation features have also been enhanced and now include additional object handling tools that better simulate and assess production performance and throughput in the processing of consumer packaged goods and other process industries that include fluids. These are innovative tools that ease the simulation of fluid piping operations, including both horizontal and vertical piping systems, and predict outcomes of fluids that are mixed in tanks and then distributed to downstream processes.

Operator free walk path simulation tools

Operator free walk path planning and simulation tools are especially designed to assist electronics and semiconductor industry users –and others that regularly deal with manual operations– to more effectively allocate and utilize manual labor. With this software, manufacturers are spared the difficult task of identifying and providing operator footpaths that can move an operator from one point to another. The most important feature of this software is that it is capable of drastically reducing the time it takes to simulate manual operations involving walking. This path planning software incorporates the ability to automatically recognize both the machines and equipment and other non-walking areas (as defined by the user) to identify those spaces in which the operators are allowed to move as it automatically calculates the shortest walking paths between targets on the production floor.

NX Line Designer and Teamcenter Manufacturing integration tools

Another innovative feature of this release of Tecnomatix is its enhanced interfacing between NX Line Designer and Plant Simulation, thus leading to better production layout optimization. This new capability, which focuses on the automotive, transportation, and heavy equipment machinery industries, enables users to transfer a layout from NX Line Designer directly into Plant Simulation. This data is used to create an initial simulation model that greatly speeds up the process of optimizing the plant layout for production throughput and material flow.
As a first-time release, the Teamcenter® Manufacturing Access, developed on top of the Active Workspace platform, provides for an advanced integration of resources and operations between Teamcenter Manufacturing and Process Simulate. This program enables simulation engineers to perform all their tasks using just one application, Process Simulate. Now added to Process Simulate are such tools as Load Study and Classification Search that permit the direct accessing and loading of Teamcenter data, thus improving usability and reducing dependency on the Teamcenter Rich Client.

New usability enhancements and tools

To address ease of use, improved visualization, and performance, this latest release has been enhanced wıth several new usability tools that make Tecnomatix solutions even more enjoyable to use.
The Process Designer, Process Simulate or RobotExpert applications are now preceded by a new Launch page. The Welcome and What’s New tabs on this page provide a variety of useful information about new features, as well as providing easy access links to recent files with clickable Favorite ranking stars and icons that allow the user to open or create studies, indicate the current system root location, allow access to the Options dialog, and links to various related social media channels. Another linked tab opens the Siemens PLM Community site, providing quick access to further information via blogs and knowledge-based articles.
Other usability tools include more common user interface (UI) theming across applications, ribbon menu interfaces, simulation performance improvements, multiple graphic window viewing, and the support of multiple languages.

Additional software features and tools

Process Designer 14

Robcad data migration, Pack and Go improvements, AutoCAD® certifications, Ticon integration, and the handling of alternatives are just some of the enhancements to Process Designer.

Process Simulate 14

Certain features of Process Simulate, including the ‘export to web function’ and ‘point cloud data integration using Bentley Pointools,’ have all been updated and improved.
Among the new advanced features of Process Simulate Robotics are the expanded dual arm robot support, updates to the Automatic Path Planner, and the addition of skip welding operations to the Continuous Process Generator.
Virtual commissioning using the OPC Foundation’s new OPC Unified Architecture (UA) protocol is now supported as a new feature of the Process Simulate Commissioning.
The simulation of human tasks has become even easier and more powerful with the modifications made to our Process Simulate Human. With our Task Simulation Builder (TSB) the user gains the ability to control motion specifics even more quickly than before. Along with this innovation, the user can now also reuse the edits when running different size ‘what-if’ scenarios and can also now integrate motions captured from motion tracking systems directly into TSB simulations. Additional posture manipulation controls –including a highly efficient interface for hand manipulations– have been added to accelerate realistic figure posturing. Reports can also become more concise by utilizing the interface to the improved Ergonomic Analysis Worksheet (EAWS).

Plant Simulation 14

Plant Simulation’s newly enhanced SimTalk 2.0 scripting language both significantly simplifies the modeling process for objects, libraries, models and methods, and offers an integrated compiler to quickly and easily convert between 1.0 and 2.0 syntaxes. Other new features include the OpenTools geometry importers that have been adopted for additional 3D CAD data format support, and the point cloud data integration feature that allows for the high-performance use of 3D laser scan data directly into 3D simulation models. This release also includes such innovative features as enhanced drag and drop conveyor and line modeling, Microstation® and AutoCAD layout import improvements, virtual commissioning support of OPC UA, and several other modeling and usability refinements.

Factory 2017

The latest releases of FactoryCAD, FactoryFLOW and In Context Editor (ICE) also introduce support for AutoCAD 2017, Teamcenter 11.2, and Microsoft® Windows® 10, Office® 2014 and Office 2016. The programs have been considerably strengthened with improved toolbar and menu loading behavior, better backward compatibility, enhanced direct Teamcenter resource access tools, and the inclusion of a tutorial inclusion and Tecnomatix public community link directly in the ribbon menu. In response to strategic customer requests, this release also implements such new features as block manager migration, FactoryFLOW component tree expansion and part routing.

RobotExpert 14

In this release, the features of RobotExpert have been expanded to now include the creation of skip welding operation to the continuous process generator.
Other

Tecnomatix has eased the transition from older to newer versions of its software, for the different versions can now be installed side-by-side on a single system. New certifications are also available for various CAD systems, including Catia® and AutoCAD, as well as Windows 10 and Office 2016. This new version also includes an application for licensing setup and maintenance, and an improved documentation interface for online help.
The software is packed with product release notes that detail the many other new features. Additional community posts also discussing these and other new features and tools in more detail.